Lassen Forest wants comment on planned Reading Fire clean-up

Drive begins on forest work in wake of fire

The Lassen National Forest is taking public comment on plans to log trees and replant areas burned during last summer's Reading Fire.

The 28,000-acre fire burned about 11,000 acres in the Lassen National Forest. Most of the fire burned in the adjacent Lassen Volcanic National Park.

Forest Service officials have written a report on a proposal to do work in the burned area and want public comments before writing an environmental assessment. The public can comment on the report until Thursday.

The Reading Fire was one of three big blazes in Shasta County last summer, including the Bagley Fire, which burned 46,000 acres northeast of Lake Shasta and west of Big Bend and the Ponderosa Fire, which burned 28,000 acres around Manton and Shingletown.

Officials with the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, where the Bagley Fire burned, and the Lassen park could not be reached for comment about recovery efforts following fires in those areas.

Most of the area burned by the Ponderosa Fire was private land owned by Sierra Pacific Industries of Anderson.

Mark Pawlicki, a spokesman for SPI, said workers have logged 60 percent of the timber burned in the Ponderosa Fire, and they expect to finish harvesting timber in the area by July. The company owns 17,600 acres of the 28,000 that burned, he said.

Lassen National Forest officials haven't yet begun removing trees in the area burned by the Reading Fire. Under the proposal released in December, forest officials plan to remove trees on 6,580 acres of the total area burned. Trees would be replanted on 7,915 acres, and 3,970 acres would not be replanted, leaving the area to naturally produce seedlings.

"Without reforestation efforts, conifer recovery would be very slow and the area could stay in the brush field/grassland stage for a century or more," according to the report.

The large pine, fir and cedar trees are needed in the area for animals, including the California spotted owl, goshawk, American marten, Pacific fisher and the Sierra Nevada red fox, according to the report.

The report proposes leaving some large, dead trees spread out in 5-acre plots in 15 locations in the burned area to study.

The report proposes no tree cutting or replanting within 300 feet of Hat or Lost creeks in the burned area. Logging also would be prohibited within 300 feet of bogs, meadows, springs and ponds. And there would be no logging within 150 feet of seasonal streams.

The report does not indicate when work would begin on the Lassen forest.

Only about 10 percent of the timber burned in the Bagley fire has been harvested. Pawlicki said less work has been done logging and reforesting on the Bagley Fire because access is more difficult and the terrain is steeper than in the Ponderosa Fire area.

Between the Ponderosa, Bagley and other fires last summer, about 33,000 acres of SPI timber was burned, a record amount for the company.

To make room at their mills for all the burned timber it hauled in, the company reduced the amount of non-burned timber it was cutting in other areas, Pawlicki said.

SPI lost about 80 million board-feet of timber in the Ponderosa Fire and 100 million board-feet in the Bagley Fire, he said.

Sierra Pacific also has been harvesting timber for other, smaller landowners in the Ponderosa Fire, Pawlicki said.

He said in addition to logging, the company has had to do work on improving roads in the area, erosion control and buying and planting seedlings to replace the burned trees.

About Damon Arthur

Damon Arthur covers resources, environment and the outdoors for the Record Searchlight and Redding.com.